1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to print controls for converting a print object to PDL data, and outputting PDL data to a printer.
2. Description of the Related Art
Print objects print requested from application software in a computer system normally are printed by a printer through a print program referred to as a printer driver which controls the printer. This type of use of a printer driver increases the load on the printer since the print object is send directly to the printer and printed. In this printer driver, first, intermediate data are generated from the print object. Then, PDL data described in page description language (PDL) are generated to specify the print image, and the PDL data are output to the printer. In the printer, the PDL data are converted to bitmap data and printed.
There is prior art for determining a mode for converting original image information from intermediate data (Japanese Laid-Open Patent No. H10-336438). This art generates an index from the intermediate data, determines an image processing mode considering image quality, and converts image information to image information suited to the image processing mode provided in the printer. However, this art suitably adjusts the resolution and number of tones of the image information in accordance with the performance of the printer, so as to maintain the image quality as much as possible.
There is prior art related to expansion processing from PDL data (Japanese Laid-Open Patent No. H11-24863). This art generates a bitmap image based on intermediate data, divides the bitmap image into a plurality of band regions and stores the bands in memory, and reduces the expansion processing load on the band memory based on the intermediate data by determining the number of lines expanded across each band region. However, this art is a method for processing bitmap data of expanded PDL data in band memory, and reduces the load of expansion processing from the PDL data.
Considerable time is required to print a print object requested from an application, and increasing speed is sought. One factor taking time when printing a print object is the enormous amount of data of the print object provided to improve the resolution of the printer. Furthermore, another factor is the proliferation of printers coping with a plurality of PDL. When printing using such printers, a PDL must be selected from among a plurality of PDLs to generate the PDL data. Conventionally, the user doing the printing selects the PDL, and the PDL is selected on the application side. However, when a PDL other than a specific PDL is selected depending on the print object, extra time may be required for the PDL data generation time and printing time of the printer. Furthermore, the PDL preparation time may change depending on the operating environment of the computer generating the PDL data. For this reason reducing the print time and selection of optimum PDL from among a plurality of PDLs is sought.